Making doctos scapegoats for drug cartel opiods.. And patients suffer

Inside Sources: Misdiagnosing the Opioid crisis.

Policymakers in Washington and in state capitals are misdiagnosing the opioid crisis as a doctor-patient problem. Their policies are coming between doctors and patients. They are preventing doctors from using their judgment and expertise to ease pain and suffering. They are making many patients suffer needlessly, with some turning in desperation to the black market.

yeah. Old ladies often sell or give each other their pain pills, not so their friends can get high, but so they can get pain relief. Ditto for tranquilizers. This doesn't bother me too much.

Then you have the stealing of grandma's medicines by druggies or by teenagers trying to get high. This can be a problem, especially if the one stealing the drug is the caregiver or friend who "helps" the old person (often they are not working and living off of grandma's pension, or stealing money from her).

This is low level crime, and hurts our patients.

But this is nothing new.

The real problem behind the "crisis" is the drug cartels. Again from the article.

On August 1, and September 5, two separate raids by combined federal and local narcotics police in New York City seized the largest haul of the powerful opioid fentanyl in New York history. This included 140 pounds of fentanyl (32 million lethal doses), 75 pounds of fentanyl mixed with heroin, and additional stores of heroin and cocaine.
New York City special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan told reporters, “The sheer volume of fentanyl pouring into the city is shocking. It’s not only killing a record number of people in New York City but the city is used as a hub of regional distribution for a lethal substance that is taking thousands of lives throughout the Northeast.”

unfortunately, he then says: stop drug prohibition and the overdose problem will go away.

Nope. Because they will still go to illegal sources to get high. And Fentanyl is a much better "high" than marijuana. The dirty little secret is that marijuana is almost legal anywhere: it is rarely prosecuted (all those folks jailed for "marijuana possession" are often plea bargains for bigger crimes that might be hard to prove, maybe because the victim is afraid of being killed if they testify, and more often because the court system if overworked).

And of course, the societal problems from being high is huge, as we see in broken families, in car accidents, and in unemployment because who will hire such a person.


I have been saying this for quite some time: The "opioid crisis" is not from doctors prescribing opioids for pain, but from drug cartels smuggling in opioids, often fentanyl and analogs that are powerful and easy to overdose. And, like in the Philippines "Shabu" drug wars, a lot of it is from China.

That is why Duterte remains popular here, despite the  SJW complaining all the time and spreading their complaints all over the world. That is why the "huge" anti drug war anti Duterte demonstration that the MSM in the US lauded as showing people are starting to oppose his war last week only had 5000 demonstrators, even though you can hire people to demonstrate for ten dollars a day: because even the unemployed street people won't take your money. (and three times that many supporting Duterte, something that the MSM missed).

So where are the anti drug types in the USA?

A friend used to tell me about the huge amounts of cocaine etc. used by the elites in Washington back in the 1990's (a friend's daughter worked for the Justice Dept and was scandalized).

And of course, I worked on the Indian reservations, where alcohol was the drug of choice: Keep them drunk, and they won't be a problem. (which is why as the tribes get more sovereignty they often prohibit alcohol). Nowadays, of course, it is stronger drugs, but never mind.

Who was the black politician who blamed the CIA for the crack epidemic in the 1990's? Yup. Maxine Waters. She is still at her "Conspiracy theories" of course, but you know, most conspiracy theories arise from information that is not being reported, and then they exaggerate and/or twist the information, so easily get things wrong, but there is a core of truth underneath.

But who benefits from the drugging of America?

Place conspiracy theory here.

I know who "benefits" from Shabu trade here.

Politicians, and businessmen, and crooked cops, and crooked officials looking the other way when it is smuggled in (e.g. like the recent discovery of how a load was let thru customs at the airport).

Also, since Filipinos work all over the place, it is easy to find a drug mule to carry the stuff all over: So we have been a hub for distribution.

Who suffers? The poor who take it to get high, or to be able to work harder. And their families. And now, of course, a lot of the casualties are ordinary folks who were in the local distribution racket: When a tricycle driver makes 600 pesos ($12) a day, it is hard to support a family, so why not take that package and deliver it because you need the money for your family?

This is why many of the casualties of the drug war are "innocent": No, they are often in the wrong place at the wrong time when a raid is going on.

But the rich are the ones behind the problem, the rich who don't care about the casualties of taking drugs, they are still at large, and using the SJW types to try to take Duterte down before he finds enough evidence to put them away.

The Catholic bishops are busy condemning Duterte's drug war, but they don't seem to see the casualties of drug use here.

Like the lady across the street who died of "a heart attack" at age 37 (shabu/meth induced of course).

Or the teenage girl killed by her druggie boyfriend whose body was dumped in the cemetery near Lolo's grave (she was breaking up with him).

or the elderly people killed in ordinary robberies/home invasions (three in our area in recent years).

Or the many bodies that are found tied up and with evidence of torture (by drug gangs, usually for being a snitch: these bodies were commonly reported found before the drug war started, so don't blame Duterte).

so where are the churches in all of this?

The Catholic bishops here of course condemn the poor pushers killed in Duterte's drug war, but how many bishops have condemned the politicians who take bribes and kickbacks from the drug lords?

Maybe in private, or maybe in vague terms without naming names.

Or are they too busy pushing the Green agenda and the Francis church's idea of "mercy" to bother to see the casualties of corruption?

The old Testament prophets wrote a lot of stuff condemning such corruption in business and government.

Ah but mercy!

Those who insist Jesus meek and mild would never condemn someone, well, could I remind you he broke up the sellers in the Temple. The naive left wing types that run the church hint this was anti capitalism, but anyone who lives with corruption figures they were over-pricing and gouging customers, and giving kickbacks to the priests.

Disease in the headlines

From the UK Mail:

Fight against anal cancer. Yes, gay and Bi men problem.

probably related to warts/ human papilloma virus. And a depressed immune system from HIV.

And hopefully the vaccine will cut down the epidemic.


So exactly why did a feminist magazine aimed toward teenaged girls have an article about how to do anal sex?

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Cancer cluster at a police station in Cincinnati

The District 5 police station sits just on the other side of Interstate-75 from Mill Creek, which was declared 'the most endangered urban river in North America' by American Rivers in 1997.

also from the UKMail.

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public pooping and the 4F problem

A mentally ill person is defacating in public on a person's lawn, and lawyers are claiming it's his/her right. (as a trans, a protected minority I guess). (via Instapundit)

Attention: One common way that disease spreads is the "Finger Feces Food Fly" route of transmission.

from Wikipedia:

Wikipedia lists diseases that spread this way:

Bacteria[edit]

• Vibrio cholerae (cholera)

• Clostridium difficile (pseudomembranous enterocolitis)

• Shigella (shigellosis / bacillary dysentery)^[3]

• Salmonella typhii (typhoid fever)^[4]

• Vibrio parahaemolyticus^[5]

• Escherichia coli^[6]

• Campylobacter^[7]

Viruses[edit]

• Hepatitis A^[8]

• Hepatitis E^[9]

• Enteroviruses

• Norovirus acute gastroenteritis

• Poliovirus (poliomyelitis)

• Rotavirus^[6] – Most of these pathogens cause gastroenteritis.

Protozoans[edit]

• Entameba histolytica^[6] (amoebiasis)

• Giardia (giardiasis^[10])

• Cryptosporidium (cryptosporidiosis)

• Toxoplasma gondii^[7] (toxoplasmosis)

Helminths[edit]

• Tape worms^[6]

• Ascariasis and other soil transmitted helminthiasis

second headline: Death toll from San Diego Hepatitis epidemic reaches 17.with no signs of slowing.

guess where it came from?

In this case, genetic analysis has shown that the strains in this outbreak are unrelated to another ongoing outbreak in Southeastern Michigan and to previous multistate outbreaks connected to frozen strawberries and pomegranate seeds. But the same analysis has also proven that there is a connection to a much smaller recent outbreak in Santa Cruz County, which has 69 confirmed cases mostly among homeless residents and illicit drug users, much like in San Diego.

the second story has a photo showing them cleaning off the sidewalks with bleach water.

they are also giving out hepatitis A vaccine and handing out hand cleaner and towels and plastic bags to discard the excrement safely.

well, duh.

And both articles note that they are going to teach the public the ways to prevent the virus, such as handwashing, and getting Hepatitis A vaccine.

yup. that will protect yuppies, but not the hallucinating or high homeless person who has no access to running water or toilets.

The epidemic seems to be spreading from public defecation by street people. One article on the right wing site Breitbart said part of the spread was because plastic bags were banned, so street people could no longer bag their excrement. (/sarcasm).

but I am linking to them because they pulled their story from the local paper.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, something as simple as a ready supply of littered plastic bags may have slowed the spread of the outbreak.

“The reason the outbreak has spread so rapidly is because homeless are living in more concentrated areas,” said Dr. Jeffrey Norris, the St. Vincent De Paul medical director who has been managing the charity’s response to the public health threat. “They often have to defecate in their tent, or next to their tent, and that exposes their neighbors on the street. Hygiene becomes incredibly difficulty.”

By “taking away a manageable alternative to defecating outside a bathroom,” the article suggests county health workers have been forced to play catch up and spend more money “handing out thousands of ‘hygiene kits’ that include plastic bags.”

Here is another article from Kaiser news, that discusses the response, or lack thereof:

Health officials in California are struggling to contain fierce outbreaks of hepatitis A among homeless people and drug abusers in three counties, including San Diego, where at least 17 people have died.

Hundreds more have become ill and been hospitalized, mostly in the San Diego area, often not far from tourist destinations. The disease also has cropped up farther north in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz counties. Poor access to restrooms and sinks in homeless encampments is largely to blame.

Public health officials say the crisis has caught them off guard because it’s rare for the disease to spread so rampantly when it isn’t tied to a common source, such as a tainted food product. Meanwhile, as cases mount with no end in sight, critics fault authorities’ response as lethargic.

why the sluggish response? They are poor, and homeless. Many homeless are mentally ill and/or drug abusers, and some are aggressive if you bother them.

“We go into the canyons, we go everywhere,” said Amy Gonyeau, chief operating officer for the Alpha Project, a nonprofit that provides homeless services. “We go out every day. We have our own vehicles and vans … we educate people on what’s going on.”

On a recent morning, an Alpha Project team delivered hygiene kits — soap, hand sanitizer and other toiletries packaged in clear plastic bags — to a crowded encampment in downtown San Diego’s East Village neighborhood. Tents and shopping carts line the sidewalks in this section of downtown that’s largely hidden from the city’s tourists.

“It looks like a war zone,” said Larissa Wimberly, an outreach supervisor for Alpha Project. “There’s people out here with HIV, people out here with cancer, there’s people out here with heart issues. There are people who are just old and feeble and they’re not eating right. It’s really sad.”
As Wimberly rides shotgun in a large, white Alpha Project van driven by her colleague Cain Mariscal, she points to the myriad tents and shopping carts. Behind and between them, she says, many residents relieve themselves.
“It’s everywhere,” she says of excrement. “It’s just really bad right now.”

But the real reason: They are invisible.

 critics say health officials have been too slow to act, especially to install toilets and sinks.
“This whole crisis is man-made,” Michael McConnell, a La Jolla, Calif., coin dealer and advocate for homeless residents, told the San Diego Union Tribune in a story published Monday. “The response is certainly much too late, based on when they knew they had a serious problem. Even today, all they’ve done is the most easy stuff. They have taken zero bold action.”
Some told the newspaper that the reaction is symptomatic of a lackluster response to the problems of  poor and homeless people in their midst.

 all of this is basic public health. Their public health spokes person laments

“This is an unprecedented outbreak,” said Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer and director of Public Health Services for the  San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency. “This is new territory.”

sheesh: Unprecedented? Lady, where have you been.

Any doc who has worked in Zimbabwe or in the Philippines or even on the Native American reservations is aware of how these diseases spread.

give a call to the local National Guard or Reserve units and ask for a specialist on field hygiene and water supply.

I know there are a lot of military vets in the San Diego area, so it's not like no one knows this stuff.

Public toilets, or even open pit latrines with disinfection in wooded areas could be dug quickly, and regular toilets with running water could be supplied in a few weeks.

the military knows that disease causes more casualties than being shot at. So they hold regular courses on this for soldiers. LINK more HERE.

you mean, the head of public health hasn't bothered to do basic stuff that any army unit is taught to do (and could probably set up in homeless areas within a few weeks)?

It's basic public health: Or basic sanitation.

the local SDFreePress article (sept 2017) (a progressive paper) is quite blunt about it, and outlines the tepid response to the homeless in that city over the last year.

This explains the background to the epidemic: press conferences and plans being drawn up slowly but little action.

Sheesh.

I should note: In rural Africa, one problem was that people relieved themselves in wooded areas: "go to the woods" was a euphemism for "go to the toilet".

But they would not use latrines because they smelled and were full of flies.

We started working with the schools on building latrines with fly traps and with instructions how to put in disinfection so that the smell would be minimal.

Here, men do their thing against walls, and the park downtown has public toilets with running water, but I don't know if anyone uses them.

We have our own septic tank (actually two: one for the house and one for the business compound). But most of the drainage just goes into the open air ditches that serve us for sewers.

Now that the open ditches are being made larger and are covered, it makes me wonder what will happen. I know our local jail drains into a crack in the ditch cover, but overflows badly....But we are rural Philippines, not a first world major city.

mark your calenders: International Toilet day is November 19.

Be afraid. be very afraid

Wesley Smith reports that a poll in pro Euthanasia Canada (Quebec) says 91 percent of caregivers want to be able to kill people with dementia, even against their wishes.

This doesn't surprise me.


In the early 1990's, our Family practice journal printed a pro euthanasia article, where "assisted suicide" author actually started his article with an anecdote where a stressed out caretaker and the doctor discussed too bad they couldn't kill her. Uh, demented people can't commit suicide. They are incompetent. But never mind. Ah, but the guy was pro euthanasia but managed to hide his agenda behind a subtle wall of "I ony want to discuss both sides of this" meme.

Yeah. Let's discuss both sides of Hitler's T4 program, which saved money wasted on caring for the mentally ill and retarded, and as a bonus, it freed medical personnel to help the war effort.

And of course, deny that this would lead to a slippery slope when the line moved from killing dying Typhus patients in concentration camps to just killing anyone with genetic inferiority: mainly Jews, and Gypsies,

But never mind. We (two professors and myself) protested and managed to get a nice nuanced article published about the problem..

(we had less luck with Cardinal Law, whose minions probably kept the letter from his eyes, and finally we were told they would have their own expert write on it...a wishy wash "MEGO" article full of mush that didn't really explain what was going on,  in the diocesan paper, but that's another story).

After our article was published in the medical journal, one of my "partners in crime" got a letter from a nursing home doc discussing which of his patient he would kill once killing was made legal.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Any doc worth his or her salt can kill and get away with it.. and the bad news is that some of them can and will do this.

and the line between refusing extraordinary care and treatment of severe pain with high doses or narcotics that could shorten your life (both of which are okay in Catholic ethics) is a fine line.

but that's another long essay...

Lessons from Ebola

The ancient use of drugs tor fanatics in the Middle East

StrategyPage has an article about ISIS guys using a meth like drug, including that they use it by injection.

Few ISIL fighters would surrender and many of them kept fighting even after they were wounded. It was also found that many of the dead (and some of those taken alive) had got by on little sleep for weeks in an effort hold out. One reason for this behavior was drugs. That was not unexpected. What was somewhat surprising was the large number of dead ISIL fighters who were apparently taking more powerful drugs via injection rather than the more common pills. Counter-terrorism analysts have long recognized the connection between illegal drugs and Islamic terrorism. While these drugs are not forbidden in Islamic scripture, as alcohol is, most Islamic scholars and clerics condemn drug use by Moslems. Yet one of the appeals of Islamic terrorism is the tendency of these groups to point out that there is a long tradition of “Holy Warriors” (what the rest of the world calls Islamic terrorists) using these drugs in various religiously approved ways

they also get into this history which goes way back:

rug use by Islamic terrorists is nothing new and it has existed at least since the 11th century. The first recorded users were the Hassassins (or "hashasheen" or users of hashish) of 11th century Iran. The training back then was similar to what many Islamic terrorists groups still use today. There was liberal use of hashish to provide a taste of paradise for new recruits. As is the case now the medieval Hassassins went on suicidal missions assured that they would experience eternal paradise if they died. The Hassassins began when a Iranian minor noble with a grudge and excellent organizational skills created a network of suicide assassins who were convinced they were doing God’s Will. The Hassassins thrived, and killed, for many decades until the Mongols came along and destroyed their impregnable mountain fortress. The Mongols were not afraid of suicide assassins but were annoyed by them. Back then, annoying the Mongols was almost always fatal.